


Choices

by seeminglyincurablesentimentality (myinnerchildisbored)



Series: Rose Shelby vs. All the Bastards [10]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 11:09:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18939718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myinnerchildisbored/pseuds/seeminglyincurablesentimentality
Summary: Rose and Tommy have a 'sweet face' face-off on the way to what closely resembles a truce...of sorts.





	Choices

**Author's Note:**

> This bit follows the last chapter directly, starting the morning after.

“Good morning, Rosie.”

The early morning sun was flooding into the dining room and gave Grace a halo.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, thank you.”

It took all of Rose’s willpower to get the words out and sounding bright and cheery. She’d barely slept a wink. Even if the big house hadn’t been haunted – which it absolutely was - the knowledge that her new, posh school started today would have been enough to keep her up.

“Would you like some toast?”

“Yes, please.”

She sat down to a plate of fucking toast with fucking marmalade. When they played snooty rich ladies – Alice and Helen and Rose – toast and marmalade was the sort of thing they pretended to have, giggling hysterically, because toast and marmalade were stupid. Sensible people had bread and jam – which was just as well, because marmalade, as it turned out, was bloody awful. Rose chewed and swallowed regardless.

Her father folded down his paper and glanced at her.

“Morning, darling.”

He might as well have slapped her. Rose looked up and was met with a level, perfectly still gaze. Forcing a clump of scratchy, bitter breakfast down her throat, Rose martialed all the resolve she’d left.

When Pol had explained about the sweet face – the mooi goodlo – she’d neglected to mention that two could play at the same game. It hadn’t occurred to Rose that her father would unsheathe a sweet face of his own and slam it down in between them like an iron-wrought fence. What Polly had said though, was that you had to keep the sweet face up at all cost; once it slipped, it couldn’t be put back on. It was orright to take breaks when you were away from the people the sweet face was for, but when they were around no mistakes were allowed. That, Pol had told Rose, was the hardest bit.

And now that her father was in on the game and playing along, conjuring this strange new version of himself, there would be precious little opportunity to take a break.

“Good morning,” Rose said evenly.

He’d not get the better of her, he bloody would not.

“Will you take Rosie with you on your way into town, Tommy?” Grace asked. “For her first day?”

Rose, desperate for an excuse to keep her mouth closed, shoved another piece of the revolting marmalade toast between her teeth.

“Would you like that?”

“Only if it’s no trouble,” Rose managed, just, curling her toes violently inside her boots.

“Not at all,” her father said with an indulgent smile that gagged Rose worse than the marmalade.

Her own smile was feeling a little shaky round the edges, but it was the best she could do.

It’d be orright, maybe, it’d be just the two of them driving into town.

#

When Rose climbed into the idling car half and hour later, her face washed, her hair back and her stupid uniform rustling with newness, her father’s horribly fixed smile was still in place.

“All set, darling?”

Rose’s heart crashed into the pit of her stomach. She’d had hoped – feebly, but still – that he was putting on the sweet face for Grace’s benefit. But Grace was nowhere near now, no one was. It was just the two of them. This sweet face was not for Grace, it was for Rose.

“All set.”

She’d started it, she couldn’t be the first to falter. Rose set her eyes straight ahead and her smile firmly in place. She’d not speak until spoken to, that was one of the rules she’d set herself. She’d supposed it would make things easier, give her time to think, keep her one step ahead.

It might have worked, if it hadn’t been for her father’s perfect silence.

Tommy drove along, eyes on the road, a pleasant smile on his infuriatingly relaxed face.

By the time they rolled into Egbaston – bloody Egbaston, home only to sooks and toffees – Rose was ready to throw herself at his feet and beg him to just be normal again.

They pulled up outside the gates, along with a surprising number of other cars, and Rose was distracted for a moment by the throng of girls making their way into the imposing building, like a herd of penguins. None of them looked like they’d ever even heard of two-up.

“Here we are,” her father announced, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. “You’ll be orright going in on your own, like a big girl, won’t you, darling?”

Rose nodded, uncertain whether she could trust herself to speak and still maintain her smile.

He was killing her, yet anyone listening would have thought this a perfectly normal conversation. It was the very definition of the sweet face game and he was so much better at it than she was, Rose realised, it was like putting a bear into a boxing ring with a rabbit.

“I will…” The rabbit, Rose decided, would not go down without at least trying to put up a fight “… _daddy_.”

He didn’t flinch, though she could tell he wanted to.

“Off you go then,” he said.

Rose climbed out of the car and stepped into the current of black and white uniforms, letting it sweep her into the jagged rocks unchartered waters.

#

The problem was that there just wasn’t enough mooi goodlo left in Rose to last her through a whole day of school. She arrived in the classroom so wrung out, she didn’t even think to lie when the teacher asked her to introduce herself to her new classmates. Her father had told her not to reveal the lack of staunch Catholics in their home, to keep her mouth shut when it came to the business of betting, to not breathe a word about having ever even come across a gypsy; but he’d not mentioned with one word that telling the class she’d just moved out of Small Heath might be a bad idea.

Probably because it was painfully obvious.

By lunchtime Rose knew she was doomed. Utterly and irrevocably…fucked.

There was a small gaggle of them, playing cat’s cradle near where Rose was trying to make herself disappear into the wall. Her shoelace had come undone and she was nearly cross-eyed, she was so tired. And, to be honest, tying laces was not Rose’s forte even when perfectly rested.

“Why’s it taken her so long?” one of them asked, just loud enough for Rose to know she’d been meant to hear.

“It’s probably her first time wearing shoes,” said another.

There was much giggling and it didn’t stop when Rose abandoned her shoelace to walk over to them. They grinned at her, smug as anything. Rose grinned back, took the one who’d slagged her off by the shoulders and pushed her hard enough to put her on her arse.

“What’d you fuckin’ say?” Rose asked.

They gasped rather dramatically, Rose thought; but then their smiles returned and they were smugger still.

“I beg your pardon?”

Rose wheeled around and bumped into the sister behind her in the process.

“What is your name?” she demanded.

“Shelby,” Rose said resignedly. “Rose Shelby.”

“You are new here I take it.”

“It’s me first day.” Rose didn’t bother raising her head.

“Well, that is a pity.” The sister shook her head and, from somewhere in her stupid robes, withdrew a wooden ruler. “Hold out your hands, Miss Shelby.”

When you got hit in the head too hard, it could make your brain swell up and then someone would have to drill a hole in your head otherwise it’d explode. Rose couldn’t remember where she’d heard this; but she knew what it felt like now, the need for a hole to let the pressure out. When the sister was done whacking her – twice on each hand, the left for the swearing, the right for the push – Rose could feel a small pop deep inside her.

She turned and she ran.

#

Rose opened the door of number six a little over an hour later, listened for a moment and, when the coast seemed clear enough, walked up to her room. She sat on the bed and looked around the room. Their things were gone, hers and Finn’s, but the furniture was still there.

It’d be fine.

It wouldn’t be like living alone, not really. The shop was right through the door and there were people in it most hours of the day, it would be fine. There’d be visitors, as well, probably.

Rose put her head on the pillow. There was noise drifting up from the street, somewhere a factory horn went off, there was a smell of something burning in a yard down the road. Curled into a ball on top of the blankets, Rose closed her eyes and went to sleep.

#

Judging by the light streaking the wall above the bed, it had to be late-afternoon. Rose stretched until her fingertips and toes touched the ends of the bedframe.

“Sleep well?”

Her father was sitting on Finn’s bed, smoking.

“Yes, thank you.”

He smiled.

“D’you want to keep at it, do you?” he asked.

Rose shrugged.

“Why’d you run off?”

“Dunno.”

Tommy watched and waited, the smoke wafting from his mouth made him look like a dragon.

“I’m not goin’ there again,” Rose told the dragon.

The dragon blew another cloud. It was still and patient and immovable as though it was made from stone.

“She whacked me. One of the sisters.”

“Ah.” The dragon flicked the cigarette out of the window and turned into her father again. “And why’d the sister do that?”

“They were laughing at me,” Rose said.

“And then?” Tommy asked patiently.

“I put one of them on her arse.”

He smiled and nodded very slowly.

“So,” he said after a bit, “what do you think you’ve accomplished today?”

Rose frowned.

“What’s that?”

“What good did it do?”

She shrugged.

“Orright,” he said pleasantly. “Let me tell you. All your hard work today, all the pushing and swearing and running away, all it’s done, my little love, is to make more troubles for you.”

Rose scowled at him.

“It’s true,” he went on. “See, now all the sisters, they’ll be watching you that much closer, waiting for you to put the next foot wrong. And all the little girls will be that much more keen to wind you up, so you get done again.”

“I’m not goin’ there anymore,” Rose said again.

“Yea, you are.”

“I’m not.”

“Let me explain something to you, Rosie.” Her father still didn’t sound angry at all and somehow that made everything worse. “You don’t get to decide any of these things. Not where we live, not which school you’ll go to, not who I choose to have in my house. These are decisions that have been made, it’s done. So. What d’you get to do?”

“Dunno,” she said darkly.

“You, chavi, get to make it easy on yourself…or harder.” Tommy was watching her closely.

“How?”

“I don’t know,” he said with a smile. “Depends on what you want.”

Rose scrunched up her nose, confused now. Her father got up, walked over and sat next to her on the bed.

“Show me your hands,” he said.

Rose held out her hands hesitantly, there was only one very faint line left over on the right one.

“D’you feel bad for what you did in school?” Tommy asked.

“No.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Not really.”

“Was it worth it then?”

“What’s that mean?”

He smiled again.

“If you’d not had a go at whoever was laughing at you and hadn’t gotten your cuts, would you feel better now?”

Rose thought about this, she really did.

“No,” she said finally.

“Orright,” her father said. “That means it was worth it, even if it got you in trouble, even if it didn’t change a thing. Because it made you feel better.”

Rose looked over at him in surprise.

“What you’ve got to do, Rosie, every time you decide to do something, is to work out in advance whether or not it’ll be worth the trouble it comes with.”

“Is there always trouble?” she asked.

“In some way or another,” Tommy said. “But if you think it’s worth it, because it’ll be the thing that makes you feel best, then you go ahead.”

“Really?”

“Yea.” He lit a fresh cigarette. “Now, Grace and I are getting married. The baby’s coming. You’ll not be going off to live with anyone else – yea,” he said when he saw her face “Pol told me – and you’re back to school tomorrow. You can pick fights and play games and rage against it, if it makes you feel better; but there will be consequences and, in the end, nothing’s going to change.”

“You can’t make me like her,” Rose said.

“I know that,” Tommy said. “But, you see, I’ve decided that having Grace around is worth dealing with any trouble you choose to make.”

“Deal with it how?”

“Depends on the trouble.” He shrugged. “The point is, you can do as you please, so long as you’re willing to face what goes along with it. Fair enough?”

“Yea,” Rose said slowly.

“Come on.” Her father got up and held out his hand to pull her to her feet. “If it’s still light by the time we get out of town you can have a go driving.”

“The car?” Rose’s eyebrows shot up.

“No, the horse and cart.” Tommy rolled his eyes. “Of course, the bloody car.”

“What if I crash it?”

“If it cheers you up even a little,” her father said, “that’ll be worth it.”


End file.
